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I don't follow the Halos much, but does anyone see any parallels between the Angels and the Red Sox? They've really been into the free agent splashes the last several years while forgoing in-house talent (trading away Segura, Corbin, to name a couple) for those free agents. The formula hasn't worked, especially this year.

Absolutely. I've been saying for awhile that you can extend that to the manager's office where I think Scioscia (like Tito) is probably still a good manager but may no longer be the right manager for this team.

No, Snap- Jesus can hit the curve quite well, he just can't help others hit it much. Sort of like Stan Musial...

(Great story from Curt Flood about his asking Musial for help hitting a curve. Musial's reply was something like, "Well, look for it, then hit the hell out of it." Flood said it was like asking a nightingale how it sang...(Source- Halberstram's "October '64")

This explanation seems a little pat to me. Hamilton spent 4 years in Texas hitting the #### out of the ball; only now has it ocurred to MLB pitchers that he can be reduced to a 82 OPS+ scrub by throwing him a steady diet of breaking pitches?

there have been cases where a league got wise to a hitter and the hitter was never able to adjust.

robin yount hurt his shoulder in the mid-80's which required the move off shortstop because he couldn't throw any more. yount also became an inside out hitter making right field his power field. yount rarely really turned on an inside pitch like he had from 1980-1984 pre-injury.

I was amazed at his performance in 1987-1989 because it was obvious watching him every day that yount could be jammed by hard stuff yet nobody really changed their approach to take advantage of it. then he wins the mvp in 1989 and come 1990 everybody is throwing him hard stuff in or it seemed like it

anyway, he was never able to bounce back because as he admitted after he retired he had been compensating the latter half of his career.

by 1991 yount was always just hoping for a mistake because anything middle in at 90 mph or greater handcuffed him completely.

there have been cases where a league got wise to a hitter and the hitter was never able to adjust.

It's simply impossible that the past 5 years took place and NOBODY in MLB thought, "Hey, let's see if this Hamilton guy can hit a breaking pitch." My guess is that when he was tearing things up in Texas, he was able to handle breaking pitches well enough that hitters had to throw him fastballs regularly to keep him honest. He now apparently can't handle those breaking pitches, so pitchers are exploiting that until he demonstrates he can. Most likely he's either suffering from an injury which is affecting his ability to make contact with breaking balls, or he's lost a bit of his ability and is cheating on fastballs, which is harming his ability to adjust to offspeed stuff.

Most likely he's either suffering from an injury which is affecting his ability to make contact with breaking balls, or he's lost a bit of his ability and is cheating on fastballs, which is harming his ability to adjust to offspeed stuff.

Either that or he picked the wrong half-season to quit some other drug he's on.

Last offseason, my main goal was to trade him off of my fantasy team. Watching him flail away at bad pitches was harrowing. And the park effect of going from Rangers stadium to Anaheim scared the crap out of me. I got Prado and a draft pick that I turned into Berkman. It seemed so clear to me that he was a huge risk this year. Please pass along to the Angels that I am available for consultation.

Fangraphs has run values per 100 pitches, by pitch type. Hamilton is actually hitting better against curves this year than his career average. Also doing OK against cutters. But much worse than usual against fastballs, sliders, changes, and splitters.

12+ years back, I remember the Red Sox had a terrific record of handcuffing MVP Juan Gonzalez and then Sox catcher Scott Hatteberg was asked how by a Boston Globe writer and foolishly answered "We just never throw him a strike". From that point forward, Juan Gonzalez showed a modicum of patience against the Red Sox, perhaps having seen the article, and got some important hits against the Sox. But it seems that Gonzalez somehow didn't see the obvious modus operandus till it appeared in the paper.

there have been cases where a league got wise to a hitter and the hitter was never able to adjust.

It's a funny game ... sometimes it seems there's an unwritten rule that you're only allowed to exploit a guy's weakness once per game or something. Reggie Sanders had a nice 7000 PA career swinging and missing every fastball up out of the zone that he saw. Yet this could only be used against him regularly in the post-season: 195/283/326 with 79 K in 251 PA.

It's a funny game ... sometimes it seems there's an unwritten rule that you're only allowed to exploit a guy's weakness once per game or something. Reggie Sanders had a nice 7000 PA career swinging and missing every fastball up out of the zone that he saw. Yet this could only be used against him regularly in the post-season: 195/283/326 with 79 K in 251 PA.

This is a good observation. It is obvious that the successful post season teams really game plan for each hitter, the Cards are masters of this, they seem to be able to neutralize great players in the post season by executing the game plan, attacking hitters weaknesses. Of course we all know playoff opponents are advance scouted to death.

Despite all the talk about MLB being as data savvy as ever. It is clear most teams still lack the ability to put that data to use during individual games during the regular season. Opponent planning seems lacking. I highly doubt any team is putting together as elaborate game plans for the regular season as they do for the post season and fewer seem to have the discipline to execute elaborate game plans during reg season games. This all strikes me as a huge opportunity.